In today's networking infrastructures, there is often a need to manage interconnecting devices, such as switches, routers, and the like. Such management is often performed remotely from the interconnecting devices, and may often be performed at a central location.
Management of the interconnecting devices may include any of a variety of activities, such as managing faults, managing a configuration of the interconnecting devices, managing network utilization, managing performance, managing security of the interconnecting devices, and the like. There are a variety of network management protocols that may be employed to assist in performing these activities. For example, Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) developed Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP) as an application layer protocol to support the above mentioned management areas. The Internet community also developed a network management protocol, called Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).
The SNMP network management protocol has evolved from its original configuration. In particular, SNMP now has several versions available (e.g., v1, v2, and v3), with more versions expected to follow. Each version may include differences in how they operate, as well as in a set of parameters that may be selected by an administrator, and the like. For example, SNMP v1 and v2 protocols employ community strings for authentication, whereas, SNMP v3 employs a user identifier (e.g., userid) for authentication and further enables the administrator to specify encryption of data. In some networking infrastructures there may be a desire to seamlessly employ various versions of the network management protocol based on a given situation. Thus, it is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.